‘It’s a time equation,’ said William.
‘He must have something in mind for you,’ said the Comte. ‘Let me do something for you, Jules? I’ll go and see the Raccamonds this evening myself.’
‘Say,’ Jules exclaimed, ‘while you’re there, see if he’s in cahoots with this rat Parouart. There’s some tangle there.’
* * *
Scene Eighty-six: Samson Redivivus
Aristide strode into the Paris office on the morning of the next day with a portentous air. He frowned at the appointments of the bank. ‘Handsome as a share pusher’s bank,’ he muttered. He said nothing to any of the personnel, simply went in and said to Urbain Voulou, ‘Everything all right while I was away? I caught flu: I’ve still got a fever, but urgent business arising from the Brussels visit—I hope Mme. de Sluys-Forêt got her restitutions!’
‘Yes,’ said Voulou meekly. The market being down, he was ready to flatter the proud. ‘Alphendéry saw to that. She was very nice when she left.’
Aristide waved this aside. ‘Is Bertillon in yet? I think I saw his Hispano outside.’
‘Yes,’ Voulou admitted in mild surprise, ‘but I think he’s got someone with him.’
‘He will see me,’ Aristide said.
Aristide Raccamond burst into the room, haggard, swept them all with a ‘terrible’ avenging grimace, and threw three large books on to the carpet in front of them. Then he placed his right foot on top of them, balancing his great body with an elephantine dignity, and thrusting his head forward, glared under bent eyebrows at Jules.
Jules surveyed this with calm. ‘Well, Aristide!’
‘Answer,’ said Aristide, pointing at the books with an accusing finger.
Alphendéry had a flash of illumination: he cried, ‘Harry Baur!’
Jean de Guipatin gave a clap of laughter. ‘That’s it!’
‘What?’ asked Jules, turning his head with the slow dignity of a stick insect.
‘Aristide’s imitating Harry Baur in a Bernstein play,’ explained Jean de Guipatin.
But they did not laugh. Jules turned his head with the same motion, back to Aristide. Aristide looked suddenly at them, bent and picked up the books. At the same moment, they all had the same regret: why hadn’t Jean given Aristide a blow and got the books? Had Aristide this idea, too? He looked at Jean de Guipatin and moved away from him, replacing the books cannily under his coat.
‘Answer,’ he said to Jules. ‘You have no answer.’
‘Don’t act the fool, Aristide,’ said the Comte de Guipatin.
Aristide swung round to him. ‘You,’ he said weightily, ‘you, Comte de Guipatin, do not know what they have done? You do not know that your friend Jules Bertillon is a blackguard?’
‘What Bertillon has done is his own affair: I don’t steal books,’ said the Comte roughly. ‘You are acting like a blackmailer, Aristide, and you deserve to be treated like one.’
‘Monsieur le Comte, you stand by your friends—but if you knew what I know, you would consider it an affair of honor: you have been swindled by this—’ he turned round and gave Jules a glance of contempt, ‘this skipjack.’
Before the Comte could answer, Jules said sharply, ‘Cut the act, Raccamond: give me the books and tell me what you want. You want something.’
‘Gangster,’ said Raccamond forcibly.
‘I’ll knock you down if you insult my brother,’ remarked William, rising and eying him. Guipatin motioned William back; William took no notice of this, for Aristide was a coward and had taken a step towards the door. In his warm, pleasant voice, Guipatin begged Raccamond to be reasonable, give up the books which he had no right to, and which concerned private accounts. He was surprised, he said, to see Raccamond, of whose ability he had the highest opinion, behave so irresponsibly. Someone had lied to him, some miserable clerk, perhaps, with the idea of plundering Raccamond. What a position Raccamond was in! He could be blackmailed by this clerk forever. And Raccamond was lucky if Jules Bertillon did not dismiss him immediately without handing over his clients, for, Guipatin assured him, ‘People of my acquaintance do not deal with blackmailers. A blackmailer is welcome nowhere. You do not realize, Aristide, that your present behavior will only be called blackmail by persons of position. You do not see yourself this way, Aristide, because you are a dramatic type and you see yourself as a personage in a financial drama. You are excited by the Kreuger history. You think you have walked into a robbers’ lair; you have only walked into a mare’s-nest. My poor, my good friend, collect yourself; think where you stand. If you think you’ve been robbed, let’s go over the accounts, all together. No one here wants to rob you. You’re not a subordinate—you’re a person very much valued by Mr. Bertillon and by myself. I myself asked Mr. Bertillon to accept your clients.’ A pause. The Comte de Guipatin was every inch a comte!
Raccamond looked at them all dubiously, with a certain cunning. He looked strange enough, in his lamentable heavy fat, with the books bulging his coat. After a moment he said, addressing himself only to Guipatin, ‘Monsieur de Comte, I must respect what you say: you are an honest man. I must see you alone. Will you come outside with me?’
Jules nodded faintly. ‘What have you to tell me that you cannot say here before my friends, Raccamond?’
‘You don’t understand, Monsieur le Comte!’
‘I can’t speak to you while you have some books stolen from the offices of my friend. You don’t seem to understand, Aristide, that it is—simply and plainly impossible for me.’
‘I will take these books home and come and meet you,’ said Aristide. ‘Monsieur le Comte, I cannot give the books back, I cannot: they are my only defense! They have ruined us all,’ he cried suddenly, looking at them all, in misery. ‘We are all ruined, Monsieur le Comte.’
‘You had better leave the books here, Aristide: whatever you think, it is not your business,’ said Guipatin.
‘No, never!’ cried Aristide, starting back. ‘No, my whole future is bound up with them!’
‘Where shall we meet?’ asked the Comte.
Aristide moved impulsively nearer to him; the Comte, carefully indulgent, watched him come. ‘Come with me, Monsieur le Comte!’
‘Go,’ said Jules coldly.
They waited. In half an hour they had a phone call from the Comte, telling them that Aristide, who was very decided, had agreed to come to a parley at Jules’s house at eight-thirty that evening.
‘Why my house?’ argued Jules. ‘I don’t want him there: let him come to the bank.’
Jean de Guipatin’s persuasive voice over the phone detailed their conversation. ‘He’s always been anxious to see your interior, Jules: if he can achieve this great visit, with his books, perhaps we’ll have him calmer. Raccamond is a holdup man with weaknesses: his chief foible is luxury and period furniture. Be as grand as you like, Jules: put on evening dress … pretend you’ve just come from dinner. I told him you were dining with Débuts of the Banque du Littoral du Nord. He’s impressed. I’ll be in dinner jacket myself. Tell your butler to be theatrical. That is what Aristide understands. I can’t say I’ve succeeded. He’s gone home to talk with his wife. But this is the first step gained, at any rate. He’s not going to the police tonight. By the way, he insists on seeing you alone, without your aides-de-camp, in his language. At the same time, have someone there—William, Michel perhaps. Do you mind my coming? I’m supposed to meet him this evening and act as his second. I thought it the most likely way to get hold of the books!’
‘Yes: meet him at my house.’
‘Let it be grand, Jules: put the lusters on … act the grandee!’
‘Trust me!’
* * *
Scene Eighty-seven: An Interview
After dinner Jules took a book and seated himself in a divided reception room. The others went behind the double-doors and took coffee with Claire-Josèphe. She
was one of the prettiest women in Paris. She was now in a sober dinner dress from Molyneux, without ornaments, but with her hair curled and piled in a ravishing design, calculated to impose respect even on a blackmailer.
When Aristide rang at the door, the footman, in evening dress, opened it and greeted Aristide with the air attributed by the good-hearted to grand dukes. Aristide did not reply, but walked in heavily, burdened with the three books.
‘Mr. Raccamond?’ said the footman.
‘Yes.’
‘Mr. Raccamond,’ announced the footman, in half-tones.
Aristide looked up, saw another splendid domestic at the head of the staircase, and bit his lip. He thrust his hat at the footman and began to climb the stairs, his eyes wild, sorrowful, and rimmed with fatigue. He now stared with spite and hate at the white stone stairs, the tapestries, the carved chest, the metal plates.
‘Mr. Raccamond,’ announced the butler loudly at the entrance to the salon. Raccamond lingered behind him for a moment to adjust the sliding books and his eye fell on a beautiful lacquer vase. He trembled. He pushed aside the half-draped curtain, pushed back the butler, and, rushing towards Jules, cried with trembling finger, ‘You’re a thief, you’ve stolen all you’ve got. I know you!’ He looked back at the butler to see if he had heard and cried again, ‘You’re a shark, a low thief, a pickpocket: you’re not the grandee you pretend to be. I know you.’
The butler hesitated, waiting for a sign from Jules to pinion Raccamond.
‘That is all, Meadows,’ said Jules.
The butler went off to tell Claire-Josèphe and the coffee drinkers that their visitor had arrived. But they were already silent, listening to the raised voice. Guipatin frowned. He had left Raccamond in a reasonable state of mind: where had he drunk up this fury?
‘From that woman,’ said Claire-Josèphe. ‘I just know she twists him round her finger. She’s like these men that climb telegraph poles: he’s the bit of rope she pushes up, knots up, and puts her foot in.’
William was listening at the door.
Aristide, bowed, bullish, his loose lapels hanging largely out from his tortoise belly, stood in the archway looking at Jules.
Jules got up and came forward. ‘Aristide, sit down. Put the books down. What are you afraid of?’
Aristide came slowly forward until he stood in the middle of the room: his grip on the books tightened. Then he suddenly said in a loud stormy tone, ‘I brought you clients worth millions of francs and I don’t know what’s going on in the bank. They might all have been ruined! I would have had to commit suicide. These books conceal gigantic—’ he took a step forward as if he staggered slightly—’incredible operations of fraud.’
‘Say that word again,’ said Jules in a low menacing tone.
‘I say, of fraud,’ cried Aristide. ‘The bank is no bank but a miserable bucket shop: it exists for no other purpose. I have been robbed, the clients have been robbed, systematically, over years. I know, besides, where to lay my finger, to put it on the instigator.’ His face darkened; he looked round at the empty room. In two panels in the wall two splendid Greuzes hung.
‘Have a drink?’ said Jules.
‘No, no, nothing. I will not drink in this house, till I get some explanation, some satisfaction—’
‘Wait a minute, Aristide,’ said Jules in his brittle high voice. ‘You haven’t told me what you were doing in Brussels the days you were supposed to be looking after your son and the clients. Why don’t you sit down, put down your hat, and behave normally. You’re a most abnormal man; never the smallest thing happens but you’re instantly at boiling point. I think you must be ill. If you are, say so and we’ll give you leave of absence.’
‘My clients!’ said Raccamond wildly, as if he were going to sob.
‘Your clients have never suffered with our house. Your clients have often had money restituted to them when they have lost. Your clients! Find another house in the city to treat them the way we do.’
‘You have good reason,’ said Raccamond viciously, looking straight at Jules. ‘You have good reason—you should restitute all. I’m going round to see them—to tell them—to blazon your name, to make your name a byword. I’ll let them know what you have been doing with that Jew.’
Jules had a forced laugh. ‘You’ll make yourself ridiculous, Aristide.’
‘Yes? And these books? They talk, I think.’
Jules said decidedly, ‘You’re going to leave them here: they’re my property.’
‘Never!’ He paled frightfully, looked behind him. ‘Never! These are to bring you and your accomplices to justice.’
‘Aristide, what is it you want? Tell me: I’ll make some arrangement with you.’
‘How can I believe a word you say? Liars, liars, swindlers. One moment after I leave here it will be new combinations, new plots, new conspiracies, and my clients are to suffer. I will be ruined! My God, what did I let myself in for? You never kept a straight account! Every time they put in an order to buy, you sold; every time to sell, you bought. Those orders never reached the stock exchange. My God, when I think what’s been going on! Mr. Bertillon, I always thought of you as an honorable man … how could you have done it? I can’t believe my own ears and eyes. But I have the books,’ he suddenly ended cunningly. ‘They convince me.’
‘Sit down,’ urged Jules.
‘No, no, I can’t sit down here. I don’t trust any of you. You have all told me lies; you have never told me a thing. I asked for a statement, I got jokes. I asked for special attention for my clients, when all the time behind my back you and your brother, and I don’t know who else, were fleecing them. How can I believe a single word you say? Away from me, away from me!’
‘It’s hard to get away from you in my own house,’ commented Jules irritably. ‘Although it would be a pleasure,’ he said to himself. ‘If you can’t talk like a human being in business and not a prima donna, there’s no doing anything for you. Now what do you want?’
Meanwhile he was walking round the room, apparently carelessly, with his face towards Raccamond and his eyes on the books. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jules decided to say. ‘Aristide, show me these books! I have certain connections, certain arrangements which I am not obliged to reveal to you nor to anyone. Mr. Alphendéry conducts the whole Brussels side of the business. Perhaps he has done things without consulting me; that is possible: he has the power.’
‘If he has, if he has—he’ll pay for it: I’ll denounce him to the police,’ cried Aristide.
‘I’ll ask him myself,’ said Jules. ‘If either of us has been swindled, if your clients have lost a sou, even a sou, I’ll discharge him.’
A faint color mounted into Aristide’s cheeks, but he said painfully, ‘It isn’t a question of loss—not in financial terms. It is the security of our house!’ He suddenly cried out, as if in the greatest trouble, ‘The security of the house is at stake! You must call him to account. If you don’t I’ll know that you and your brother are in league with him. Think of my position vis-à-vis my clients! Suppose the house fails tomorrow morning with this—frightful, frightful position! What am I to say? They’ll blame me; they’ll bring in the police! Where am I to go for my bread and butter? Who will believe I didn’t know myself?’
‘You mean,’ said Jules equably, ‘because of the immense salary you get?’
Aristide stared at him and became furious. ‘You’re threatening me now? I knew you weren’t sincere. You’re all conspiring to ruin me and my clients. I always knew it!’
‘You’re a fool,’ returned Jules with irritation. ‘Your clients haven’t lost anything. What damage has been done them, eh? Eh?’
‘I’m charging abuse of confidence.’ said Aristide, looking terrible. ‘You know there are laws against that? You and your gangsters haven’t spent years poaching on the law, for nothing: you know the law … you know
where the shoe pinches. You’ll come to terms with me, or I’ll call in the police.’
‘What do the books prove?’ asked Jules. ‘Can you read them?’
‘I know what they prove; I know what I have.’
‘The fact is,’ said Jules, ‘your clients have never lost a penny: their losses have sometimes been paid back to them, and you’re this minute wondering what you came here for? I’ll tell you what—for blackmail. But you have nothing to blackmail on; you have a few innocent, but strictly private books in code.’
‘I can read these books,’ said Aristide, with cunning, ‘because I have in my hands the records of orders passed through—confirmations of orders received from various brokers, plus transactions in these books, tally with orders sent in by clients.’
‘You couldn’t have found that out in a week,’ said Jules.
‘No. I have a right to safeguard my clients’ interests.’
‘Listen, Aristide. Your clients put their money in the market; they lose it to the market. If a broker simply sits on his heels and doesn’t give a word of advice, his clients will ruin themselves, simply on the turn of the wheel. All their money is gone: it goes into the market. Supposing, for the sake of argument, the broker does not execute the orders given to him. A client wants 100 International Nickel at 15. The broker gives it to him at 15. That is, he writes down in his account books: Mr. Smith, Jones, or Robinson, owns 100 shares of International Nickel at 15. Where is the loss? A month later the client comes and says, “Give me my 100 Nickel at 15,” and he gets his 100 Nickel at 15. Where is the loss?’
‘It’s abuse of confidence,’ said Aristide. ‘And if the market goes up, you have to pay him 100 Nickel at 17, perhaps. You are ruined.’
Jules smiled caustically. ‘Aristide, the market goes down. The market always goes down for the wise.’
House of All Nations Page 76
